Designing Twitter Ad Optimization Guidebook

Due to an NDA, some information has been stripped down.
If you would like to learn more, feel free to contact me for further discussion.

Summary

Optimizing advertisements seemed like a scary thing to do that many just give up trying. Thus, it was my job to break it down and make it simpler for employees and clients to understand.

role

Led the project which was initiated by Global Advertising Performance (GAP) Team

timeline

(12 weeks) May - Aug 2019

You might require background knowledge of Twitter Advertising, so why not get certified? 🏅

Before continuing we dive right in, it is best to understand the fundamentals of Setting up a Campaign on Twitter Flight School and get certified!🏅

a (super) brief overview to campaign set-up

Within targeting, there are three main options:

1. Your Audiences 👥– Reach predetermined groups of people on Twitter

2. Demographics 🗺– Gender, age, location, language, and technology

3. Audience Features 📣– Events, behaviours, interests, followers, and keywords

what’s this project about?

How does Twitter earn money? Through serving advertisements! 🖼️

There are occasions when the clients (advertisers) or account managers (employees who manage with clients) are unable to figure out why their ads aren’t serving well despite the changes and improvements made.

They then come to us – Global Advertising Performance (GAP) Team to help them optimize.

sounds alright. So what’s the issue?

There’s just a small team of us optimizing for any requests that comes in, that we even have to prioritise which we would pay more attention to. So we thought…

Apart from that, the main barrier identified was the mindset that optimization was too hard to understand.

That’s where I come in.

If an undergraduate who don’t know ad-serving can learn and comprehend the materials and knowledge in one month, anyone can understand.

At that point, I just finished a crash course with Google DIGITIZE Academy with no practical experiences. It was mostly theory on the Fundamentals of Digital Marketing that I entered with.

timeline

Bringing my prior knowledge from University, for this task, I engaged in the five-stage design thinking process. However, for this sharing, I’ve re-categorised into the following phases:

• Phase 0: Prepare – This is not an actual stage of the design thinking process but for me to establish my foundation in understanding what it is to optimize ads.

• Phase 1: Empathise & Observe –  This is the first stage of the design thinking process where I head down to understand the needs of the users of the guidebook, who are Account Managers and Clients.

• Phase 2: Define & Ideate – These are the next two stages, however, the ideation stage is not as in-depth.

• Phase 3: Prototype & Test – These are the last two stages. From ideation, it’s almost very seamless to prototyping and testing based on the layout, format, etc.

• Phase 4: Reiterate – This is not a stage of the process. Yet, it is very important to learn and improve upon users’ feedback.

Before I can even start to understand the problem, I first need to familiarise myself with the tools, and language used so I won’t be as lost.

step 1: understand the product

It was vital for me to understand how the ad serving product operated and what the ‘sweet spot’ is for the optimal performance. It’s similar to how when baking 🍞at your friend’s place, even with a similar oven, it’s still best to test it.

I spent my first three weeks reading up product briefs, clarifying with the team and the Product Marketing Team based at HQ.

step 2: understand the process

After understanding the product, it’s time to learn the fundamentals to setting up the campaign, and how the GAP team optimizes and operates.

The team then takes the time to teach me generally what aspect of areas they pay close attention to (such as budget, bids, creatives*). There are specific steps in addressing them, and it’s usable in multiple markets.

*Learn more at Twitter Flight School →

With a greater knowledge on the product, I was then ready to talk to the future readers of the guide! 💪

1:1 chats with account managers

I managed to arrange a 1:1 session with one account manager per key market to just chat on the following…

1. What their day-to-day is like ☀️ – This would firstly, ease them into the conversation compared to direct questions and secondly, gives me an idea of how potentially where and when the guidebook can be utilised.

2. What their clients’ common questions 🗣️are & how they answer it 💬– This would highlight common misconceptions of Twitter’s Advertising products**.
   ** Most clients or advertisers are very familiar with Facebook and Google marketing and although similar structure is seen, the application in terms of optimization can be very different due to the varying functionalities of the product itself.

3. When do they generally do their optimizations 🌙– This provides context to how Account Managers prioritize optimization (in their day-to-day), and how fast they react (by doing the relative changes) to the poor performance.

shadowing gap team sessions

🕵️‍♀️The team allowed me to attend their meetings with various Account Managers, and even show me their #gap-help slack channel! I mainly did observations

define: set the requirements

From the 1:1 sessions with account managers and shadowing, along with the GAP team sessions, the following were highlighted.

behavioural traits of target audience 👥

Clients and Account Managers, at the end of the day, are people like the rest of us. We just want things quick, fast and simple. To the GAP team, it seems understandably easy (because we have been doing this daily) yet, there is a requirement to ensure information gathering and processing is easy.

requirements of the guide 📋

1. The guide has to be applicable to employees and clients worldwide 🌎– This guide is envisioned to be a one-stop resource. It also makes it easier for finding in the intranet or resource hub for one main guide as compared to multiple guides split by verticals, industries or regions.

2. The guide has to take into account the relevance for Clients 👌– Not every knowledge is useful or necessary to the Clients. Having too much detail can result in an information overload 🤯. Generally, clients need to have visibility and understanding on the campaign strategy (with ad groups, targeting and creatives). BUT, they do not need to know the execution portion as it’s generally handled by Account Managers.

3. The guide should serve as a complement – There has been various optimization practices by different offices, but it should not change too drastically the current practices the Account Managers already have.

guide’s DESIGN requirements 🎨

Mainly, the guide has to support information foraging, meaning, how to support the readers’ natural instinct to gather information. (THINK: Wild animals gathering food akin to how we collect information online.) The following requirements are what should be in consideration when designing.

1. The guide has to scannable text 📝– Clients and Account Managers deal with more than just ad optimizing and would most likely only utilise the guide as a reference, following it through as potentially a checklist.

2. The guide has to have clear information visualisation 📊– This can be the form of infographics or small multiples. This is important because in optimization, what is most important is the increment in performance. For e.g., it would be crucial to mention there’s a 30% uplift in downloads just by updating on the creatives.

3. The guide might have to be further split ✂️(principles of grouping) – It can be grouped according to the campaign timeline, which is familiar to both Account Managers and Clients.

ideate: brainstorming

When I was brought in, there was already a certain expectation set to what the end product would be. There’s a common understanding that it would be a guide or guidebook. However, there was room for brainstorming on the format and possible options to best reflect the feedback.

why is the feedback crucial?

To our audience, optimization is difficult to understand with many possible solutions and permutations. E.g. The optimization for an ad in a gaming vertical in Thailand would be different from the optimization for an ad in a lifestyle vertical in Japan.

Hence, it would be ideal for a system where the users just put in the variables (e.g. vertical, budget, etc.) to see the suggested solutions (e.g. add X more campaigns, increase X% of bid amount, etc.)

designing the prototype

format & ease – Twitter employees

Keeping in mind the need for immediate generation of solutions, we moved it to a Google Sheets.

We protected the sheets (such that the formulas would be untouched) and only leave fields that are needed to be filled in unprotected. This would make it easier for understanding.

format & ease – clients

As we need to think of clients, we have to remember to share a document that is just for them and hence, one portion of the guide has to be shareable. 🔗

VERSION 01 format

With that, we have two main documents that are accessible from the internal resource hub:

01. Planning Guide [Keynote]

The three-page client-facing guide covers tips on each important aspect in the form of infographics (i.e. tips for setting up), followed by flow chart to help make decisions on the bid type and campaign structure. The last page is on campaign planning, giving an overview to the planning worksheet.

This is editable 📝 such that the Account Manager can tailor it to suit the client better.

02. Planning Worksheet [Google Sheets]

This live document requires the Account Manager to make a copy. It’s merely a suggestion but it takes into account the various verticals and markets when suggesting.

testing it out

walkthrough

With the documents ready, I then arranged for 1:1 sessions with the various Account Managers, ensuring the following:

1. All they key markets / regions were covered

2. ~three (minimum two) Account Managers from each region / market

   • Between the Account Managers, they had to have varying levels of experience – This is to see if there’s a difference between information search between an expert and a novice.

For these 1:1 sessions, I left the sessions unstructured and just had them look at it and asked for their thoughts. In between, if there were any doubts from them or aspects I’m curious about, I would then prompt but it based of initial thoughts and potential usage.

main findings

Even with unstructured sessions, there are still common questions raised, meaning it’s indeed something to look at.

1. Unaware of sequence 🕒– We had two main documents but no one knew how to use it.

2. No examples or case studies to show the effects 📊– Despite saying how much % increment there will be in terms of pacing, spend or conversions, it is much harder to remember without a story. A linear storyline (or a case study) would be easier to follow and comprehend the effects of the documents.

3. Many questions unanswered❓– There were many questions while utilising the planning worksheet, and despite answers being in the previous document, a few account managers raised questions on the hassle of searching for answers.

From the findings, we then move on to implement changes to address them.

main changes done

version 02 format

A few things were added and changed in the reiteration:

1. Included timeline and overview ⌛– This provides sequence and better context of when (which stage of the campaign set-up) to use the respective documents. There is also a short write-up of the documents.

2. Included certain key case studies 🔑– Under Step 03: Optimization Best Practices, at least one of the key verticals (e.g. gaming, lifestyle) and key markets (e.g. Japan, Indonesia) is covered with the relevant improved metrics mentioned and highlighted. This makes it easier for Account Managers to know what they should look out for.

3. Included a consolidated FAQ ❓– It is actually an additional tab in step 02: campaign planning worksheet. This makes it easier to just search (⌘+F or Ctrl+F) their questions. Additionally, under documents, there’s an additional hyperlink to bring them to the FAQ directly.

second round of testing

After the changes made, we then proceed for another 1:1 sessions with Account Managers, ensuring they were not approached from the first round of testing.

The response was rather good so we then proceeded to have it LIVE for all the employees on the internal resource hub.

comments and feedback

After the release, we received queries if the guide was going to be for other Ad Serving products. We later then worked with other departments to create guides for the other Ad Serving products.

Background: The creation of this guide was made primarily with one main ad-serving product because it was harder to optimize for those ads due to the complexity of the product. Other Ad Serving products were more straightforward however, it was highly requested.

what could have been done better?

Looking back, I’ve grown immensely in my thought process and workflow since this project and today. What would have been much better was if I managed to:

1. Include scenarios for the Account Managers to walkthrough

2. Check with a few clients to see if it clarifies their doubt – despite the Team being internal-facing, it’s always best to observe clients directly. The source of truth on how it would benefit the clients was based on Account Managers’ response but that may not be fully accurate.

All in all,

I’m thankful to have this opportunity, to do it alongside with the GAP Team. Despite this not being a UX project with wireframes and screens, it was indeed fruitful going through the process of interviewing and reiterating the guide to deliver a much better experience.

want to learn more? let’s chat! ☕